Correlation between processing conditions, microstructure and mechanical behavior in regenerated silkworm silk fibers

Abstract

Regenerated silkworm fibers spun through a wetspinning process followed by an immersion postspinning drawing step show a work to fracture comparable with that of natural silkworm silk fibers in a wide range of spinning conditions. The mechanical behavior and microstructure of these high performance fibers have been characterized, and compared with those fibers produced through conventional spinning conditions. The comparison reveals that both sets of fibers share a common semicrystalline microstructure, but significant differen-

Bombyx moriSilk Fibers: An Outstanding Family of Materials

“…In general, regenerated silk fibers are more brittle and show poorer tensile properties than native silk. However, this is not always the case, since their characteristics depend critically on the processing method . To understand these observations Ha et al carried out a structural study of SF protein both in solid state and in solution during regeneration and wet spinning using infrared spectroscopy among other characterization techniques.…”

Silk–Its Mysteries, How It Is Made, and How It Is Used

“…27–29 Also, conventional wet spinning followed by immersion post spinning drawing step has been used to produce silk fibers from regenerated silk worm with mechanical properties comparable to that of spider silk despite their difference in amino acid sequence. 30,31 Another way of tuning tensile behavior is combination of supercontraction (see section 3) with wet spinning. 32 …”

Structure and properties of spider and silkworm silk for tissue scaffolds**This chapter was first published as Chapter 9 “Structure and properties of spider and silkworm silk for tissue scaffolds” by Gustavo Guinea in Silk biomaterials for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, ed. S. Kundu, Woodhead Publishing Limited, 2014, ISBN: 978-0-85709-699-9.

“…Some works have focused on the sequence elements that contribute to the formation of the fibers during the spinning process, in particular the extreme nonrepetitive regions (Eisoldt et al, 2012;Hagn et al, 2010). The expression of these analogs has proceeded successfully in a number of different organisms such as bacteria (Fahnestock and Irwin, 1997;Prince et al, 1995), yeasts (Fahnestock and Bedzyk, 1997;Fukushima, 1998), plants (b) The graph shows the range of possible combinations of ratios during the spinning process (Plaza et al, 2012b). (Scheller et al, 2001) and animal cells (Huemmerich et al, 2004;Lazaris et al, 2002;Teule et al, 2012b).…”